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Several riffs and ideas were brought into the session and performed live as a group. All of the songs from this session ended up on the album except one which turned out to already be a song “Sister Havana” by Urge Overkill. The only recordings were done on phones, but later that year John and Ain got together in Indianapolis and recreated 6 of the songs on GarageBand and added the song “Gone”. The GarageBand files were later converted to Logic and made up the basis of the album. Weston recorded vocals and guitars during the remainder of the year at Haskell studio in Van Nuys, CA.

At this point, there were 7 songs that had been recorded with drum loops as well as scratch guitar, bass, and vocals. Black Lava is a rental home with a large open living room where we set up the drum kit and mics and recorded for 3 days straight. By the end of the long weekend, we had all of the drums recorded and all but 1 of these drum performances made it to the final record. It’s important to note here that we had decided to record the album ourselves and it’s kind of a miracle that these recordings were even usable since we were literally learning via YouTube as we went…but hey – it worked out ok.

Later this year, Weston and Ward started setting up a new studio (Rat Soup) in Venice where recording continued off and on. Before the studio was complete, “No Fun” was added to the song list and the initial drum recordings were recorded at Dave Raven’s Studio in Hollywood, but were later re-recorded at Rat Soup.

This was the grand opening of Rat Soup Studios! For 5 days, we replaced our scratch guitar and bass tracks over the drums we recorded at Black Lava. We added percussion, claps, and belly slaps, but the main focus was on guitar and bass.

The studio is a 200sq ft sound-proof back house and was designed with uneven walls so that there are no parallel surfaces. It’s a little disorienting but reduces unwanted buildup of unpleasant frequencies so we decided the builder was drunk or a genius…or maybe both. Although it lacked the beauty of the desert, it provided a much better environment to make some noise and would remain the band’s home base moving forward.

Vocals were recorded later throughout this year and at some point “Won’t End Well” was introduced as a demo that was completed in the next session.

This was the final group recording session for the album. All instruments for “Won’t End Well” were recorded as well as multiple parts for the other songs. The studio had new gear including various amps, guitars, pedals, and mics so there was a lot of time spent experimenting with new sounds.

Shortly afterward, the world shut down and this is when most of the vocals and some more guitars were recorded. We also did some remote ‘live’ video performances of  “Won’t End Well” and an old classic “Smile”. The EP Gone was released which contained 4 of the songs that would make up the final album. Those four songs were later remixed and mastered for the final album.

The year 2021 also happened although no one seems to remember what happened then. It would be safe to say that more guitar overdubs and vocals were recorded as Weston teetered on the edge of madness fueled by the uncertainty of the world’s future and desire to finish the project.  The album was mixed during this period with the help of Matt Lynch (Mysterious Mammal) who later mastered the album.

Nostalgia was released on January 14, 2022, while the band was together at Rat Soup Studio writing their next album with a working title of The Future.